I held my breath and strained my ears. There was a feeling, rather than a sound, of throbbing in the air. It was faint, but gradually swelling.
“It is—it’s a plane!” Josella said.
We looked to the west, shading our eyes with our hands. The humming was still little more than the buzzing of an insect. The sound increased so slowly that it could come from nothing but a helicopter; any other kind of craft would have passed over us or out of hearing in the time it was taking.
Josella saw it first. A dot a little out from the coast, and apparently coming our way, parallel with the shore. We stood up and started to wave. As the dot grew larger, we waved more wildly, and, not very sensibly, shouted at the tops of our voices. The pilot could not have failed to see us there on the open beach had he come on, but that was what he did not do. A few miles short of us he turned abruptly north to pass inland. We went on waving madly, hoping that he might yet catch sight of us. But there was no indecision in the machine’s course, no variation of the engine note. Deliberately and imperturbably it droned away toward the hills.
We lowered our arms and looked at one another.
“If it can come once, it can come again,” said Josella sturdily, but not very convincingly.
But the sight of the machine had changed our day for us. It destroyed quite a lot of the resignation we had carefully built up. We had been saying to ourselves that there must be other groups but they wouldn’t be in any better position than we were, more likely in a worse. But when a helicopter could come sailing in like a sight and sound from the past, it raised more than memories: it suggested that someone somewhere was managing to make out better than we were… Was there a tinge of jealousy there?…And it also made us aware that, lucky as we had been, we were still gregarious creatures by nature.
The restless feeling that the machine left behind destroyed our mood and the lines along which our thoughts had been running. In unspoken agreement, we began to pack up our belongings, and, each occupied with our thoughts, we made our way back to the half-track and started for home.
CONTACT
We had covered perhaps half the distance back to Shirning when Josella noticed the smoke. At first sight it might have been a cloud, but as we neared the top of the hill we could see the gray column beneath the more diffused upper layer. She pointed to it, and looked at me without a word. The only fires we had seen in years had been a few spontaneous outbreaks in later summer. We both knew at once that the plume ahead was rising from the neighborhood of Shirning.
I forced the half-track along at a greater speed than it had ever done on the deteriorated roads. We were thrown about inside it, and yet still seemed to be crawling. Josella sat silent all the time, her lips pressed together and her eyes fixed on the smoke. I knew that she was searching for some indication that the source was nearer or farther away, anywhere but at Shirning itself. But the closer we came, the less room there was for doubt. We tore up the final lane quite oblivious of the stings whipping at the vehicle as it passed. Then, at the turn, we were able to see that it was not the house itself but the woodpile that was ablaze.
At the sound of the horn Susan came running out to pull on the rope which opened the gate from a safe distance. She shouted something which was drowned in the rattle of our driving in. Her free hand was pointing, not to the fire, but toward the front of the house. As we ran farther into the yard we could see the reason. Skillfully landed in the middle of our lawn stood the helicopter.
By the time we were out of the half-track a man in a leather jacket and breeches had come out of the house. He was tall, fair, and sunburned. At first glance I had a feeling I had seen him somewhere before. He waved, and grinned cheerfully as we hurried across.
“Mr. Bill Masen, I presume. My name is Simpson—Ivan Simpson.”
“I remember,” said Josella. “You brought in a helicopter that night at the University Building.”
“That’s right. Clever of you to remember. But just to show you’re not the only one with a memory: you are Josella Playton, author of——”